IBM Brings Nature to Computer Chip Manufacturing

IBM has announced that it has developed a means of creating faster, more efficient computer processors by putting tiny holes in the chips, using the natural pattern-creating process that forms seashells, snowflakes, and enamel on teeth.

In chips running in IBM labs using the technique, the researchers have proven that the electrical signals on the chips can flow 35 percent faster, or the chips can consume 15 percent less energy compared to the most advanced chips using conventional techniques.

The IBM patented self-assembly process moves a nanotechnology manufacturing method that had shown promise in laboratories into a commercial manufacturing environment for the first time, providing the equivalent of two generations of Moore's Law wiring performance improvementsin a single step, using conventional manufacturing techniques.

This new form of insulation, commonly referred to as “airgaps” by scientists, is a misnomer, as the gaps are actually a vacuum, absent of air. The technique deployed by IBM causes a vacuum to form between the copper wires on a computer chip, allowing electrical signals to flow faster, while consuming less electrical power. The self-assembly process enables the nano-scale patterning required to form the gaps; this patterning is considerably smaller than current lithographic techniques can achieve.

A vacuum is believed to be the ultimate insulator for what is known as wiring capacitance, which occurs when two conductors, in this case adjacent wires on a chip, sap or siphon electrical energy from one another, generating undesirable heat and slowing the speed at which data can move through a chip.

I may be a science geek, but computer technology is my livelihood, so I'm always stoked about any advances in computer processing. And since so much of scientific progress now is being fueled by more and more powerful computer systems, technological advances like this should have a ripple effect across all of science and technology.

The self-assembly process already has been integrated with IBM's state-of-the-art manufacturing line in East Fishkill, New York and is expected to be fully incorporated in IBM’s manufacturing lines and used in chips in 2009. The chips will be used in IBM's server product lines and thereafter for chips IBM builds for other companies.

Intel Builds Fastest Chip Ever

Intel yesterday announced that its researchers have created a single chip with 80 processing cores, capable of a trillion floating point operations per second (Teraflops). The chip isn't available yet, however, and likely won't be for another five or six years.

A chart on Intel's website demonstrates how, through frequency scaling, the chip can be made to achieve as much as 1.81 Teraflops, though doing so increases the power needed from 62 Watts (less than many commercial processors available today) to 265 Watts. Just 10 years ago, a cluster of supercomputers capable of processing the same amount of calculations took up more than 2,000 square feet and consumed a half-megawatt of electricity.

This type of processor will be a big step in the right direction for making computers do what we really want. Better pattern recognition for speech and video, better simulations of physical and biological processes, and better video games are just a few examples of how more powerful processors can make our lives better.

Processing Power

While you sit reading this blog, your computer's processor is probably sitting mostly idle. Today's computer processors are monsters when it comes to number-crunching capability, and they have to be in order to process the multimedia explosion that drives our modern society. This is especially true when it comes to computer games, which continue to tax even the most powerful systems available today with their advanced graphics, positional and dynamic audio, and artificial intelligence.

But when you're not playing high-end video games, most of that processing power sits idle. It's like the difference between driving your computer down the interstate at (or close to) top speed versus sitting at a stop light waiting to go. Your engine is still running, but it's not accomplishing anything.

With computers, though, that doesn't have to be the case. Those spare CPU cycles can be put to use for any of a large number of tasks, including searching for signals from aliens, simulating the folding of proteins to better understand the causes of diseases (and find potential cures), simulating weather to help create better predictive methods, search for spinning neutron stars by processing data from LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors, or many other projects.

The software that runs these projects is called BOINC, and it is designed to run in the background, using only the spare processing power. It doesn't interfere with your computer's normal processes, because it sets itself up to run in the lowest priority setting on your computer.

It doesn't cost you anything to run BOINC, and it may just help some advance some research project toward curing a disease or furthering our understanding of the universe around us.